Dr Alexander Mikroyannidis

Senior Research Fellow

alexander.mikroyannidis@open.ac.uk

Biography

Dr. Alexander Mikroyannidis is a Senior Research Fellow (Associate Professor) in the Knowledge Media Institute of The Open University, UK. He holds a Ph.D. in Informatics from Manchester Business School, an M.Phil. in Computation from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), and a B.Eng. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece.

Research interests

The research expertise of Dr. Mikroyannidis is in the field of Technology-Enhanced Learning. He has been investigating the use of novel educational technologies for enhancing personalised learning, self-regulated learning, lifelong learning, as well as open education. He is currently working on the transformative applications of Generative AI and decentralisation blockchain technology in the context of online and distance education. He is the author of over 130 peer-reviewed publications that have received over 1,800 citations (21 h-index). He sits on the editorial boards of several globally renowned scientific journals, such as Open Learning, a leading international journal in the field of open, flexible and distance learning.

As presented in this conference publication, the current research of Dr. Mikroyannidis is focused on harnessing Generative AI to support learner autonomy and personalisation in digital education. This research introduces a framework that integrates Generative AI tools to assist learners in setting goals, reflecting on progress, and adapting learning strategies in real time. This approach aims to transform AI from a passive content generator into an active partner in the learning process. Additionally, Dr. Mikroyannidis is investigating the potential of Generative AI to support curriculum development and improve the production of distance learning materials, as outlined in this conference publication.

Teaching interests

Dr. Mikroyannidis has extensive experience in developing rich interactive learning materials for Open Educational Resources (OERs), Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Badged Open Courses (BOCs), and eBooks. Some highlights from this work are the following:

In recognition of this experience, Dr. Mikroyannidis has been appointed International Expert in Distance Learning by the Agency for the Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education (A3ES), Portugal’s national authority for quality assurance in higher education. In this role, Dr. Mikroyannidis is contributing to the assessment of distance learning programmes across Portuguese universities, and advising A3ES on best practices in distance learning, including the use of emerging technologies such as AI and Blockchain.

Impact and engagement

The work of Dr. Mikroyannidis has led to strategic partnerships with key technological companies, most notably with Cisco and its global educational network, the Cisco Networking Academy, which has over 1 million students worldwide. Within this partnership, Dr. Mikroyannidis is in charge of the design, development and deployment of PT Anywhere, a novel educational tool for teaching computer networking skills by performing network simulations on any device. PT Anywhere has played a vital role in remote teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has been featured in the UK government’s Digital Skills Toolkit, which is offering essential digital skills to job seekers.

Dr. Mikroyannidis has led a successful pilot for facilitating lifelong learning using blockchain technologies, in the context of the European project QualiChain. In particular, he has been in charge of deploying and evaluating decentralised education and employment qualifications with learners and educators within various lifelong learning contexts. The results of this pilot are presented in this journal article. Additionally, Dr. Mikroyannidis has been investigating the impact of Web 3.0 and Blockchain on the open upskilling and reskilling of job seekers, as outlined in this journal editorial co-authored with several other renowned experts in the field of open education.

External collaborations

Dr. Mikroyannidis has been driving significant educational technology initiatives at an international level, by establishing a network of collaborators inside and outside the Open University and acquiring external funding, in order to implement and evaluate novel educational solutions in real-life settings and with real users. He has been awarded and worked on a wide range of European and nationally funded research projects, including SAGE-RAI, QualiChain, DEL4ALL, OpenLang Network, Open Networking Lab, Institute of Coding, SlideWiki, EDSA, HUB4NGI, FORGE, weSPOT, EUCLID, ROLE, OpenScout, CASPAR, and PARMENIDES.

In collaboration with the European partners of the Erasmus+ project OpenLang Network, Dr. Mikroyannidis has led the design, implementation and evaluation of the OpenLang Network platform. This platform provides provides an open and collaborative online learning environment that brings together language teachers and learners across Europe. This journal article presents the sustainable design of the platform and the tools that the platform is offering for practicing innovative learning methods, such as tandem language learning. The goal of this work is to foster the European multicultural and multilingual vision by building a sustainable online community around open educational resources and practices.

Projects

SAGE-RAI: Smart Assessment and Guided Education with Responsible AI

AIEd researchers have for decades been motivated by Bloom’s famous 1984 paper which found that students taught 1-to-1 performed 2 standard deviations better than students taught in a standard classroom setting, with the average 1-to-1 student performing better than 98% of the students taught in the control group. AI offers the potential to unlock low-cost personalised teaching to massively assist both students and teachers and dramatically improve learning outcomes. The advent of Generative AI has brought this dream closer and has captured the attention of many educators. For example, a recent study of more than 1,000 K-12 teachers and 1,000 students found that 51% of teachers reported using ChatGPT - 40% weekly. Interest and take-up is similar in the Higher Education Arena. For example, an analysis of eight Russell Group universities found that there were over 1 million visits to the ChatGPT site during December 2022 and January 2023. All of the above use is via a platform provided by a US company which has not been transparent on how the underlying Large Language Model was trained and for which there are a number of issues including: • Misinformation - responses may not be truthful. • Copyright - text may be generated which is similar to existing copyrighted content. • Bias - bias in training data may mean that responses replicate existing biases and prejudices. In SAGE-RAI we will build upon a number of existing proof of concept and pilot education-oriented Generative AI tools, created by the partners, to target Bloom’s 2 Sigma problem through Responsible AI whilst also addressing the issues raised above. In particular we will build a platform that can support assessment and provide student guidance through Responsible Generative AI.

Open Networking Lab

In an increasingly connected society, people who can design, set up, monitor and maintain a network of computers and devices are in high demand. Traditional classroom instruction is no longer sufficient to keep up with demand, and the required networking hardware is costly. The project will support development of introductory practical computer networking skills without the need for expensive networking hardware. This will be based on a network simulation package: ‘PT Anywhere’, a web-based version of Cisco Systems’ ‘Packet Tracer’ software. It will be supported by learning resources and activities, designed using an experiential learning approach and making use of learning analytics. This will allow hands-on vocational learning to be delivered at greater scale, and at reduced cost.

Open Networking Lab - Accessibility

The job market is challenging for those with restricted vision or dyslexia. However, there are opportunities for skilled network engineers because the professional tools used are text-based and accessible with assistive technology; what is lacking is accessible teaching/training resources. Training in computer networking can be carried out using a graphical network simulator such as ‘PT-Anywhere’, used in the Ufi-funded Open Networking Lab project. However, graphical user interfaces are not easily accessible to those with restricted sight or dyslexia. We will create a user interface for PT-Anywhere that is accessible with keyboard and screen-readers, enabling these individuals to learn computer networking.

SlideWiki: Large-scale pilots for collaborative OpenCourseWare authoring, multiplatform delivery and Learning Analytics

A major obstacle to increasing the efficiency, effectiveness and quality of education in Europe is the lack of widely available, accessible, multilingual, timely, engaging and high-quality educational material (i.e. OpenCourseWare). The creation and maintenance of comprehensive OpenCourseWare (OCW) is tedious, time-consuming and expensive, with the effect, that often courseware employed by teachers, instructors and professors is incomplete, outdated, dull and inaccessible to those with disabilities. By using the open-source SlideWiki platform (available at SlideWiki.org) the effort of the creation, translation and evolution of highly-structured remixable OCW can be widely shared (i.e. crowdsourced). In a similar way to Wikipedia for encyclopaedic content, SlideWiki allows users to: 1. collaboratively create comprehensive OCW (curricula, slide presentations, self-assessment tests, illustrations etc.) online in a crowdsourcing manner, 2. semi-automatically translate this content into more than 50 different languages and to improve the translations in a collaborative manner and 3. support engagement and social networking of educators and learners around that content.